Lecturer's blog 12: "Authentic Assessment: Experiences Teaching Sustainable Business" by Björn Mitzinneck

There is nothing quite as practical as a good theory. While I subscribe to that adage, in my experience, students do not always buy into it. As a researcher, I appreciate the value of theory and seek to actively contribute to its development. As a teacher, I observe students sometimes dreadful of “too” theoretical classes or “merely” theoretical discussions. This student skepticism also manifests in the style of exam preparations – cramming everything the few days before the exam and then quickly forgetting the lot after it is passed. The practical utility and hence relevance to engage deeply with the material is called into question.

Who can blame them? Most of our students do not wish to pursue an academic career but will go on to hopefully very successful and rewarding professional careers. In an effort to make assignments and in particular exams more relevant to students and to help them see the practicality of a good theory, I have taken inspiration from the principles of “authentic assessment”.

In Principle

Most of us probably already implement elements of authentic assessment in some form or fashion into our teaching, maybe unknowingly. The concept is often defined in opposition to “conventional” assessment. Whereas conventional (multiple choice) tests or papers often abstract from reality and thus isolate students’ recall ability of a particular concept or theorem, authentic assessment challenges students to negotiate the complexity of reality by applying theory. According to educationalist Wiggins (1993, p. 229) authentic assessment presents students with engaging and worthy problems that are replicas or analogues to problems faced by professionals in the field, thus challenging students to use rather than simply recall knowledge. The University of Indiana Bloomington, for instance, lists “Develop a business/marketing/sales plan for an imaginary (or real) company in a student’s area of interest” as an example of authentic assessment for Business Studies on their teaching resources webpage. Because simplicity of scoring is not the primary focus of authentic assessment, rubrics can be a useful grading tool. While implying some extra thought required in assessment design, authentic assessment comes with several potential advantages.

Advantages:

• Improved student activation by increasing relevance perception
• Students “do” the subject; more realistic
• Competence focused rather than (merely) recall focused assessment
• More direct measure of learning outcome attainment (skill development)

In Practice

Over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to develop an elective course on “Sustainability: Strategies, Innovation, and Change” within the MSc Business Administration. The course serves as a topical introduction to strategic-, innovation-, and change management concepts pertinent to sustainable business. Initially intended as a smaller course, it has grown substantially, with 180 students enrolled this year. This has presented some challenges in implementing authentic assessment ideas, probably all too familiar to everyone accommodating rising student numbers.

It is relatively straightforward to implement authentic assessment principles in assignments. Having seen many students in the course go on to consulting or sustainability related internal support functions, I developed group assignments tasking students to analyze the sustainability journeys of self-chosen companies. In board room style presentations, student teams deliver assessments of the sustainability track-records of their chosen real firms, relying on ESG data, media, and company disclosure. To help them structure their analyses, we train to use theoretical models and frameworks in active learning classroom sessions. Students thus see a direct application of the theory taught through online learning units, gaining an appreciation for how it can guide their analysis and organize their findings for the board room presentation. Students are aware of the grading rubric and can use it to develop the quality of their work further. Guest ‘judges’ from industry can offer additional input to presenting teams and help student activation. Building on these formative assessment moments, the final assignment is an advice report with concrete suggestions on how to address the pain-points and risks identified for the company in regard to its sustainability strategy. Student teams leverage change and innovation management theory to make proposals for levers to address these and for means to exploit related opportunities. They need to justify their proposals to convince (hypothetical) firm decision-makers. To help grading, I am again using a rubric.

It is a little more complicated to translate authentic assessment ideas into exams. However, considering the enrollment increases, an individual exam became an important summative assessment element in the course. The aim was to assess the students’ ability to not only recall but also competently apply theoretical concepts to evaluate real-life situations. In the spirit of authentic assessment, I am taking inspiration from current business press articles to pose mini-case-based exam questions to students. This is supported by the broader range of question formats that digital exams afford. Using matching questions, I challenge students to link pieces of evidence from the mini-cases with correct theory informed deductions. Fill-in-the-blank questions test students’ ability to correctly classify case patterns and assess their proficiency in judiciously applying the correct theoretical concept. While this is a stylized form of authentic assessment, it does help to preserve some of its core principles. It also seems to have helped with the aims for this design change in my course.

Evidence

Overall, I have had good experiences taking inspiration from authentic assessment. Student feedback has been predominantly positive.

“The team assignments were very interesting and felt like a real–life case which I really enjoyed. Really motivated me to think further than just the materials of the course.”

“I learned a lot of useful things in regards to the topic that I still think about and evaluate even after the course.”

Anecdotally, I have also heard from former students. An alumnus recently approached me with questions about some dilemmas we discussed in the course that he now recognized on his first job assignment. Our winning student team from last year’s SDG Challenge told me that what they learnt helped them structure their thoughts and inspired their winning solution for their corporate partner. I have not had such encouraging reports after other courses. It is hard to generalize from small-n evidence such as this, but I take it as a sign that authentic assessment ideas might indeed help student retention and activation, allowing us maybe to make students see that there is indeed nothing quite as practical as a good theory.

It is my great pleasure to pass the baton of this blog to Evelien Croonen. She is an inspiration to students and colleagues alike.

References and Weblinks

Wiggins, G. P. (1993). Assessing student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

SDG-Challenge University: https://university.sdg-challenge.com/

Some resources and examples for authentic assessment: https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/assessing-student-learning/authentic-assessment/index.html